NodeJS: What is the proper way to handling TCP socket streams ? Which delimiter should I use?

Question

From what I understood here, \"V8 has a generational garbage collector. Moves objects aound randomly. Node can’t get a pointer to raw string data to write to socket.\" so I

Answer 1

It has indeed been said that there's extra work going on because Node has to take that buffer and then push it into v8/cast it to a string. However, doing a toString() on the buffer isn't any better. There's no good solution to this right now, as far as I know, especially if your end goal is to get a string and fool around with it. Its one of the things Ryan mentioned @ nodeconf as an area where work needs to be done.

As for delimiter, you can choose whatever you want. A lot of binary protocols choose to include a fixed header, such that you can put things in a normal structure, which a lot of times includes a length. In this way, you slice apart a known header and get information about the rest of the data without having to iterate over the entire buffer. With a scheme like that, one can use a tool like:

• node-buffer - https://github.com/substack/node-binary
• node-ctype - https://github.com/rmustacc/node-ctype

As an aside, buffers can be accessed via array syntax, and they can also be sliced apart with .slice().

Lastly, check here: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/modules -- find a module that parses a simple tcp protocol and seems to do it well, and read some code.

Answer 2

You should use the new stream2 api. http://nodejs.org/api/stream.html

Here are some very useful examples: https://github.com/substack/stream-handbook

https://github.com/lvgithub/stick